Luxury Travel & Lifestyle Trends

Because they can (and should), boutique hotels are taking advantage of their flexibility to offer a more distinctive experience. Here are some important trends in the industry that appeal to travelers:

So how can hoteliers make the most of QR codes? With some creativity and careful planning, hotels can create a QR campaign that could enhance the guest experience, improve search engine rankings and make you stand out above the competition.

As reported by the New York Times, QR codes were all the rage during New York’s Fashion Week earlier this month. When scanned, QR codes can connect consumers to everything from webpages (company or personal), online contests, games and cocktail recipes, to personal social media pages and geographic coordinates. Even how-to videos – at Macy’s, a QR code that points consumers to a smoky-eye makeup lesson by Bobbi Brown has been an unexpected hit.

Designer hotels and products are bound to perform better than their conventional peers as more and more people are looking for niche and exclusive products and services. Together, they create an experience that finds resonance among luxury travelers.

Today’s real marketing challenge is to keep luxury experiences new and fresh; and this imperative permeates all industries – from luxury goods and travel, to beauty and food. One of the key future trends for high-end travelers is new and emerging destinations …and there’s nothing more far flung than space.

Remember the old adage that every reaction has a counter reaction? As marketers struggle with exponential growth of Internet advertising, luxury advertisers are once again focusing their attention back to print. Print has always been a cornerstone marketing channel of the luxury industry. Today’s focus is on quality versus quantity, meaning that brands would rather get a targeted message out to the right people than use a ‘spray and pray’ approach. Print media campaigns can be highly targeted to consumer demographics and psychographics.

Over the last couple years, we’ve seen that increasing destination content and SEO go hand in hand, because researching destinations has been shown to be the most popular use of Google in the travel category. Case in point: planning for an upcoming trip to Paris, I was online researching museum exhibits. Among the top results served up was Plaza Athenee’s hotel website summarizing the cultural highlights of the season.

Every luxury brand craves knowing its customers, but to do so requires connecting in real time. Real-time marketing is all about event-driven marketing and social storytelling, but timing messages to be in-sync with consumers’ current interests. Sometimes, brands will try to ignite social media chatter around big events like the Super Bowl or the Academy Awards. Other times, they may create a live streamed event, such as Toyota’s Prius attempting to break as many world records as possible next month or Burberry live streaming its London runway shows.

In 2009, I spoke about the importance of neo-tribalism (the fragmentation of society into small communities, tribes, driven by personal and social behaviors) and psychographics (the study of personality, values, attitudes, interests, and lifestyles) are keys to fashioning sales messages and ads that resonate with travel buyers.

Movies, songs and MTV first made “get real” and “keeping it real” street buzzwords in the distant ‘90s. Now, the same notion of getting real perfectly describes what consumers want this decade. Impatient, short of time and technically savvy, today’s affluent spenders are accustomed getting what they want, when and where they want it.